Best use of the Golden Gate Bridge in a political ad?

I want to write about this political ad without getting … well, political. Because I was really struck by the last image: two kids crossing a completely empty Golden Gate Bridge on the way out of San Francisco in search of better schools.
In terms of imagery, I haven’t seen anything like it. Haunting, fog-shrouded, a little melancholy, it made the point that it’s sad so many families leave the city in search of better schools. It also made me immediately wonder just where those kids are headed; this has to be the only commercial in the world that makes Marin County look like some Cormac McCarthy-esque post-apocalyptic, dystopian home schooling borderland.
So just how did the ad makers accomplish this task of getting two kids on a completely empty Golden Gate Bridge?

Director Mark Putnam, who also worked for President Obama’s campaign in 2008, offered the details.

Here’s his take:

“In making the ad, I didn’t know how you could make an ad about leaving San Francisco without working in the Golden Gate Bridge. It is such a powerful symbol of the city and I had never seen a shot like the one I was imagining, so I had to figure out an affordable way for us to do it. I had briefly considered showing hundreds of kids on the bridge, but I thought that was a little too predictable as an ending, so after showing large numbers of kids earlier in the ad, I decided to take a different tack at the end and bring it back to the isolation of just two children — a brother and sister holding hands and venturing across on their own. It was also, conveniently, an easier (shot) to pull off with just two children.

“We took a shot of the bridge, erased all of the cars and then shot the two children on a green-screen background in a parking lot. We had to find a parking lot that had the right incline to match the bridge’s incline, along with enough space to get the camera far enough back to pull off the illusion. Then in the edit suite, we keyed the children into the shot of the bridge and added some camera drift to make it appear more real.

“The shot we had to work with of the bridge had fog in it, and I thought that gave an appropriate amount of mood to the scene of two children walking alone over a six lane bridge. The goal was to create an image that, to my knowledge, had never been done before in a political ad. As an ad maker, anything I can do to make a political ad stand out from the crowd helps communicate my candidate’s message. Bevan is passionate about improving San Francisco’s schools and helping parents make the decision to stay in the city and enroll their children in the public schools. I wanted to capture that passion in the advertising.”

I thought about editing out that last part about Dufty, just so I could keep this more about the ad than the politics, but then I was so happy that Mark took so much time to fill me in on the details that I didn’t want to get him in trouble with his boss. (Thanks Mark!) I’m pretty sure there are Oscars or Emmys for political ads, and this one should shoot right to the top of the nominating list.

I always like to see the Golden Gate in ads and movies. It was pretty neat to see that one X-Men movie (23? I lost count) when Magneto tore it from its anchorage and used it as a bridge to Alcatraz. And the use of the undercarriage as a means of primate travel in the Planet of the Apes prequel was just genius (of course apes are going to swing from girder to girder! Very clever). But I liked the haunting feel of this one the best. It was short, conveyed the message perfectly and left me hoping those two kids had read The Road before starting out on their trek, just so they know what they’re getting themselves into.

MIKE ADAMICK writes at Cry It Out! (www.mikeadamick.com) Yes, he needs to read Kevin Starr’s book on the bridge.